


Now A Diff'rent Measure Try

by tielan



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Justice League - All Media Types
Genre: First Meetings, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 04:06:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11798040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: As she follows the road that winds around the edge of the lake, Diana glimpses the boxy, modern house of glass and steel and thinks,Is this not purpose?





	Now A Diff'rent Measure Try

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Apricot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apricot/gifts).



Diana doesn’t particularly like America. It has its beauty, its style, but given her druthers, she’d prefer to spend time in Mexico or Thailand – places that developed outside of the cultures that birthed western civilization.

Nevertheless, she has never eschewed the country – given how much work there is in America, wealth and power and bureaucracy allowing the acquisition of antiquities which only she can decipher, that would be foolish. She has merely chosen to spend time in other places.

Still, after the battle against Luthor’s creature, she anticipated she would be spending more time in America, and made arrangements accordingly. The weeks spent in her Paris office were mostly getting everything in order, sorting through the backlog of requests – document translations, questions of provenance, and the paperwork that is so beloved by Man’s world – and closing up her Paris apartment, even as the one in Gateway City is aired out.

“ _The commute will be hell,_ ” said Diana’s personal secretary as she sorted through Diana’s mail. “ _Also, if you’re going to be in Gotham so often – yes, I have a brain and I can string things together – then why not take an apartment there?_ ”

“ _Because I do not think_ he _would like to see me interfering in his city.”_

Ella snorted. “ _Okay, that’s fair. But you’ve managed to stay out of humanity’s current affairs for a hundred years, Diana – and great-grandmama wrote in her family memoirs that she wouldn’t swear by World War II – and all of a sudden, with one battle, you’re back in the ring?_ ”

Diana thought of Bruce Wayne standing in a Kansas graveyard, vastly out of place in his tailored suit and polished shoes. _Just a feeling I have._ She thought of the twitch of broad shoulders beneath the fine wool coat, clearly uncomfortable with both the weight of guilt and the weight of responsibility and yet denying neither.

“ _Yes_ ,” she told Ella.

Now, Diana drives down the road through the Wayne Estate, thinking that the last light of day does Wayne Manor no compliments. There is a terrible grief in the edifice that looks like it should be in the rolling English countryside surrounded by lawns and gardens, instead standing in fields that should be filled with wildflowers and which see only weeds. It is too apt a visual metaphor for the fall of the Wayne family, and yet...

When she passes through the screening hedge of centuries-old Lombardi pines, the emptiness eases somewhat. Although the woods are not any more comforting, they are, at least, not a bitter reminder of glory lost.

 _All glory fades, Diana,_ Antiope’s voice murmurs in her ear. _Mankind has always sought glory, but it is purpose that remains, that drives an Amazon of Themiscyra_.

As she follows the road that winds around the edge of the lake, Diana glimpses the boxy, modern house of glass and steel and thinks, _Is this not purpose_?

At the door, she rings the bell that does nothing to announce her presence - after all, the Batman would have been aware of her arrival long before.

It is not Bruce Wayne who answers the door, however, but an older man.

“Ms. Prince, welcome to Wayne House. I am Alfred Pennyworth, Mr. Wayne’s butler. May I take your coat?”

Diana has stood in the foyers of British Lords who can trace their ancestry back a thousand years, and is familiar with the mien of upper-house servants. She relinquishes her coat to him, notes the swift masculine summary of her figure through leggings and cowlneck top, and the glint of approval before she follows him through the house.

“I apologise on behalf of Mr. Wayne; he’s been delayed by business in the city.”

“Business?” Diana inquires, “Or _business_?”

“These days there’s hardly any difference,” Alfred replies dryly as he shows her to a sitting room that looks out over the lake. “May I get you a drink? Wine or spirits?”

“Whatever you are drinking will be fine.” Diana has already noted the desk in the corner, the lamp casting a warm glow over the papers spread out across the desk blotter, a trace of whiskey in the cut glass tumbler, the bottle still to hand. “The Triple Wood?”

“The Laphroaig,” he confirms, a wry smile twisting his mouth as he reaches for a glass from a drawer in the sideboard. “You have a refined palate, Ms. Prince.”

“I’ve had some time to work on it.”

Her comment is innocuous enough, but the flicker of his lashes as Mr. Pennyworth glances her way suggests that he knows about her history. Diana understands servitude and its degrees in ways that she did not when first she came to Man’s World. And now, looking into the dark eyes, she can see that his man may style himself a butler, but his roles encompass far more than that.

“How long have you worked for the Wayne family, Mr. Pennyworth?”

He pours her a glass, hands it to her with a faint, ironic smile. “An eternity, Ms. Prince. Or so it sometimes feels.” His smile is droll as he hands her the glass. “Perhaps not quite as long as Ms. Candy’s family has been working for you.”

“With,” she corrects him as she takes the heavy crystal tumbler. “In the beginning, Ms. Candy worked _with_ me, Mr. Pennyworth. She was...my guide in London after the war.”

“And your friend?”

“And my friend.”

Discomfited by the studying look in dark eyes, Diana sips her whiskey, and turns to survey the room.

The gift of the photograph has resurrected old memories, both of Themiscyra and her family, of Steve and Etta, of Napi, and Sameer, and Charlie, of that brief and yet intense time that she knew Steve and loved him. Perhaps someday she will share that story with Bruce as he has requested, but not yet.

Instead, she allows the whiskey to linger on her tongue, rich and smooth, and regards the sitting room. In spite of its clean, spare lines, it manages to evoke a sense of a library or old-fashioned study. Perhaps it is the soft lamps that light the space, or the shelves that are filled with texts both classical and modern – from what looks to be Latin texts to various modern thrillers she recognizes by the covers.

“An eclectic collection of books, Mr. Pennyworth.”

“There are rather more in the vaults,” he says. “And, of course, the electronic archive. Although I find that reading a book on electronics doesn’t quite bring the same degree of...hmm...shall we say _tactile_ comfort that can be found in the pages of a book?”

She smiles a little. “The number of books in Man’s World fascinated me at first. So many books, of all types and kinds... Books at home were not bound as they are here.”

“Your people had a largely oral tradition?”

“An oral tradition, and what you call scrolls, although I only knew them as books. There was a vast library, quite full of them. Only a handful were books bound along the spine, and even they were not quite...what you might think of as books.”

The vision of Ares being cast out of Olympus swims before her; the pages magicked by a process that Diana never inquired after, and which she doesn’t even know if Hippolyta knew how to do. Just one more mystery of the gods, left among the Amazons for them to focus their purpose – rather like Diana herself.

Me. Pennyworth’s eyes narrow slightly, before he tilts his head. “This may be rude to ask, but where, exactly, did you grow up, Ms. Prince? All Master Bruce could find of you indicated that you came out of nowhere into the war, a matter of weeks before the armistice was signed, and even those accounts were sketchy and disparate. One might even suggest you sprung, fully-fledged from nowhere, like Athena from Zeus’ forehead.”

The reference, she suspects, is more intentional than accident. Still, she doesn’t find his questioning rude.

“I suppose I did come from nowhere – I grew up on an island of women warriors.”

“An island of...” He blinks, but collects himself. “That’s...different.”

Diana smiles, reminded of Steve’s double-take upon learning of her origins. “It was the upbringing I knew.”

He nods, and his gaze is sharp. “But can no longer access?”

“No.”

She has sought Themiscyra in vain. Not to go back, for that is forbidden, but simply to know that it is still there, to know that her mother and her sisters are still alive, still training for the fight that is yet to come.

Her mother was right about the Great War; it was not that war for which the Amazons had trained. And yet it had been Diana’s fight nevertheless – to bring down Ares and leave mankind to its own destiny – for good or for ill.

With the time and maturity of a hundred years, Diana knows that she did the right thing to leave Themiscyra. It has not been an easy century, watching the evils of Men’s hearts create wars and divisions between nations and races and genders. She particularly struggled with the post-war years, a time when she clung to vestiges of hope for humanity before it died in the decades that followed in Europe, nationalist pride and genocide, all tinged with the bitter knowledge that this was no god-induced madness, merely man's own cruelty.

Yet she understands better than ever what Steve taught her at the end. Love is what redeems humanity, even as its own hatred condemns it to not only war but the battles of their own prejudice and bitterness.

“My condolences,” he says gently, then turns his head a little, tilted as though listening. “Ah, the prodigal returns.”

Now that Diana listens, she can hear the distant growl of the engines – a resonance that shifts subtly through her skin. Doubtless there are other indicators to Mr. Pennyworth.

“While you are waiting for Master Bruce to come up, perhaps you would like something to eat?”

“I would not wish to put you out.”

He snorts. “Ms. Prince, if I offer you dinner and you accept, and Master Bruce arrives and finds his guest in the middle of dinner, it might possibly persuade him to take a bite or two himself.”

Diana smiles at Mr. Pennyworth’s cunning; a man with experience in handling his employer and former ward. “I would be glad to accept dinner.”

Dinner is a rather nice roast which Mr. Pennyworth takes out of the oven, and even carves before her eyes. Even in the crisp, clean kitchen, filled with the newest and shiniest of appliances, the scent of the meal and its preparation has a quintessentially British feel about it that makes Diana briefly long for London and the lunches that Ella’s mother still puts together when Diana comes to visit.

Mr. Pennyworth’s version is perhaps not as homey, but even were Diana looking for fault, she would not find it in his roast, from the meat and roasted vegetables, down to the puffs of golden pastry that sit crisply on the side of the plate.

“You _do_ eat Yorkshire pudding, Ms. Prince?”

“I would not consider a roast complete without it, Mr. Pennyworth,” she assures him, and watches him smile as he sets the dish out before her.

“A discerning guest. Rather more discerning than the host, I fear.”

Diana doesn’t bite back a smile as the shadow in the doorway steps in, a glass of whiskey gently swinging between his fingers. “Blackening my name again, Alfred?”

“Merely observing facts, Master Bruce.” Alfred indicates the empty seat and the full plate beside Diana. “Sit and eat your dinner like a good boy.”

The hiss of air from Mr. Wayne’s lungs is laughter. “I’m pretty sure Ms. Prince can guess that I was never a _good_ boy.”

“You shared – a little,” she reminds him as she takes up her knife and fork. “And I owe you for the photograph. I am prepared to concede that you might have your redeeming aspects.”

She ignores the look that passes between the two men, the elder decidedly pointed as he pours a stream of red wine into glasses, the younger seeming resigned as he takes his seat beside her and regards the plate before him with a rueful expression.

“I hope the trip out from Gateway City wasn’t too onerous?”

“No more onerous than a conversation of inconsequentials,” she says as she starts in on the dinner.

His mouth flashes in a small, brief smile. “I have the files on the others downstairs. But Alfred prefers I don’t discuss business in the kitchen.”

“I should much rather he appreciated my food,” Alfred observes as he tosses a towel over his shoulder and steps into a side room, from which his voice drifts drolly out, “Unlikely as that is.”

Diana looks at Bruce who rolls his eyes at Alfred’s shot. She indicates the plates in front of them. “This is delicious.”

“Tastes of home?”

“No.” But it is one of the things she learned to appreciate in those early years in England – a good British roast, cooked well, and eaten in the company of friends. And if Bruce Wayne is not yet a friend, well, after the battle of Metropolis and the gift of the photo in Veld, there is potential for that much. She taps his plate with the blade of her knife. “Eat, Mr. Wayne. If you do not, I might have to steal Mr. Pennyworth from you.”

Again the disembodied voice drifts out, “It wouldn’t be stealing!”

Bruce half-shakes his head as he looks from the room to her, resigned and amused and respectful all at once. “As you wish, Ms. Prince.” But he takes up his knife and fork and begins eating, if not with appetite or appreciation, at least with a will.

Diana knows she will encounter that will again – doubtless in opposition to her own.

She rather looks forward to it.


End file.
